Bible Review

All quotes from the libretto are taken from the booklet accompanying Samson et Dalila, Choeurs et Orchestre de l’Opéra-Bastille, cond. by Myung-Whun Chung (EMI Classics: CDS7 55470–2, 1992).

See Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories, Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 49–50.

The most comprehensive analysis of this opera remains Henri Collet, Samson et Dalila de C. Saint-Saëns: Étude historique et critique analyse musicale, Les Chefs-d’Oeuvre de la Musique Series (Paris: Librarie Delaplane, 1922). For a more condensed reading of the opera, see Brian Rees, Camille Saint-Saëns: A Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999), pp. 210–215.

Saint-Saëns was consciously using the hyperchromaticism of Liszt and Wagner in his opera, and the French were embroiled in the early stages of one of the largest ideological battles in music history: those who favored the “New Music” of Liszt and Wagner versus those who allied themselves with the more conservative classical tradition of composers like Mozart, Schubert and Brahms. Thus, many in the French musical establishment felt Saint-Saëns was too liberal or progressive.

See Rose Mary Sheldon, “Spy Tales,” BR, October 2003.

Genesis Rabbah 15.7. On the following Jewish and Christian interpretations, see Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, vol. 5 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1968), pp. 97–98; and Ginzberg, Die Haggada bei den Kirchenvätern und in der apokryphischen Litteratur (Berlin: Calvary, 1900), pp. 38–42.

Trans. George W.E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), p. 320.

For Paul and mysticism see esp. Christopher R.A. Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited (2 Cor 12:1–12): The Jewish Mystical Background of Paul’s Apostolate,” Harvard Theological Review 86 (1993), pp. 177–217, 265–292.

A colleague with whom I shared this work puckishly raised the example of Psalm 23: “He makes me lie down, he restores my spirit ... Your rod and your staff, they comfort me ... You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” A Freudian die-hard would find erotic imagery here, too, where others might be skeptical. The difference is that Psalm 45, unlike Psalm 23, describes the beauty of a bridegroom and bride.